Who are you calling mommy?
By Kimberley Jane Wilson
web posted January 24, 2005
Normally I would never read anything by New York Times
columnist, Maureen Dowd for the same reason I rarely read
Doonesbury or Dave Barry's stuff. It just doesn't strike me as
being funny but after seeing a flurry of commentary on Dowd's
op-ed "Men Just Want Mommy" I decided to read the thing.
What a profound disappointment. Dowd, a single woman herself
accuses men, or at least New York men of being afraid of
successful women. She reasons that this is why men end up
marrying lower class, less intelligent, subservient women. Who
are these unworthy women? According to Maureen Dowd they
are "secretaries, nannies, caterers, flight attendants, researchers,
and fact-checkers."
Having spent most of my adult life in the research field I began to
bristle when I read that line.
Most of the people I've done research for over the years have
been men and none treated me like a mommy figure or like a
slave. The attitude of the smarter ones was pretty clear. They
needed to know something and didn't have the skill or inclination
to get the information themselves so they cheerfully paid me a
salary to find it for them. If there is something low class in that I
don't see it. I also don't recall doing a geisha act around the men
I worked for. None functioned as my own personal "Sun God"
and there was no time for "orbiting, serving and salaaming," in
any office I've ever worked in.
While reading "Men Just Want Mommy" I came to the
conclusion that Maureen Dowd's problem is not so much about
foolish men as it is plain old fashioned snobbery. Judging from
this op-ed I can only guess that she just doesn't like working
class women.
Later in the op-ed piece Dowd uses movies as examples of
what's wrong with today's guy. Her main target was last year's
"Spanglish," Adam Sandler's effort to show he can do stuff
besides comedy. Dowd is miffed because Sandler's character, a
chef with a severely neurotic and spoiled wife falls for his
Mexican maid. Horrors! Imagine a chef falling in love with a
woman who, in the movie is depicted as being not only good
looking but kind hearted, brave, patient and in the end, noble.
Like the wicked step sisters in the Rodgers and Hammerstein
musical "Cinderella" a sour Ms. Dowd wonders why a man
would want a woman like that.
Dowd's next target is "Love Actually" a not half bad little English
film where Hugh Grant was miscast as a British prime minister
who falls in love with his personal assistant. Another man in the
movie is smitten with his secretary and yet another character is
interested in his Portuguese maid. None of the female love
interests are portrayed as being evil so the only thing "wrong"
with the love affairs is that the women actually work for a living.
Oddly enough Dowd gushes over those old Spencer Tracy and
Katherine Hepburn movies because they are snappy romances
between tough and witty equals.
There's just one problem. Those movies were fantasies.
In real life Tracy and Hepburn's love life was a bit different. By
all accounts Spencer Tracy loved Katherine Hepburn but made
it clear that he would never divorce his long suffering wife. The
best Hepburn could hope for was to be a long time girl friend.
When faced with either the decision of taking this or leaving it,
she took it. Hepburn remained at his side, unmarried and publicly
unacknowledged for 27 years. So much for the movies.
When Maureen Dowd asks "was the feminist movement some
sort of cruel hoax?," I almost stopped reading. The feminist
movement never promised that its darlings would have happy
love lives. Actually, it promised women a future where they
wouldn't need or want a man for much more than sex. Dowd's
idea of feminism seems to have little to do with the uplift of
womankind and everything to do with keeping the waitress, the
maid, the nanny and the elementary school cafeteria lady firmly n
their places: Out of sight and away from any marriagebable man
that Dowd might be interested in.
At the end of "Men Just Want Mommy" Dowd quotes unmarried
actress, Carrie Fisher, who is and always will be the immortal
Princess Leia to me. Leia, I mean, Carrie says that she no longer
dates "powerful men" because they all want women who are in
"service professions." No offense to Carrie or even to Ms.
Dowd but perhaps it's time they both realized that Prince
Charming belongs in the same category as Santa Claus, the Loch
Ness Monster and Big Foot. Even if Prince Charming did exist,
he'd run away from a potential princess with the attitude Carrie
and Maureen Dowd of carrying around.
There are small minded, control freak type men who genuinely
want an unequal, downtrodden woman because that's all they
can handle but don't tar all men with that brush and don't slam all
working women as being slow thinking menials either.
(c) 2005 Kimberley Jane Wilson
Enter Stage Right -- http://www.enterstageright.com